Replaced
by Silver Pansy
Summary: Something's strange about Ichigo lately and Rukia's determined to find out what it is. Rated T for Language aka Shiro's bad mouth


Silver: Plot bunnies love me, that's all I can say. I may not get around to Ichigo's Family for a while so until them you're stuck with my wonderful one-shots. Hmm, this one's so much shorter than the other two. Oh well! *leaves to take care of bunny infestation*

Pansy: Silver doesn't own Bleach or any of its characters. Enjoy.

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The first time Rukia noticed something was wrong was when she met Ichigo at school. In all honesty, an easily riled, snappish Ichigo wasn't too much of a change from the original and so, while not entirely pleasant, Rukia had written it off as a bad mood. The next few days however were what made the raven haired midget think about how he'd seemed that day. They were just little things, unnoticeable if you hadn't been spending more time than was probably healthy with him. Sometimes, when someone or something pushed the taunting a little too far, the substitute's normally kind bronze eyes glowed a poisonous, malicious gold. That usually resulted in said annoyance suffering an unnecessarily cruel beating or, in the case of Hollows, death. Ichigo, while undeniably violent, wasn't cruel. Something had happened that first day or sometime around then, and Rukia was determined to find out. To help her friend of course, she wasn't at all curious about what Ichigo did in his free time.

She supposed the best place to start was by asking the orangette himself. Even if he wouldn't tell her he'd at least confirm whether or not there was actually anything wrong with him. She slipped into his room one morning while his family was out via window, somewhat surprised when Kon didn't immediately greet her. Must be sleeping, she concluded rather thoughtlessly. Ichigo was in bed, oblivious to the outside world, oh how that was about to change.

"Ichigo!" The sudden noise was enough to have said orangette flailing in his covers as they unceremoniously dumped him on the floor.

"Wha' th' 'ell was tha' fer, ya damn midget," was his indignant cry when he finally freed himself from the tangle of blankets to glare baleful golden eyes up at the Shinigami. Rukia mentally raised an eyebrow; that was one hell of an accent. The voice was higher pitched than Ichigo's too. What in the world was going on here?

"Who are you and what did you do with Ichigo!" her purpose in coming here had changed slightly though not much. She still wasn't sure what was going on with Ichigo, but it definitely had something to do with who ever this was.

His eyes became slightly unfocused when she asked, as though he were thinking about the answer to the hardest question he'd ever been asked. When he came back around, the golden in his eyes had faded back to Ichigo's bronze, though the hate and malice was still clearly evident.

A nasty, shit-eating smirk crossed his features when he replied, "None a yer business, bitch. King'll come back 'ventially, but 'till then ya gotta deal with me." Yep, definitely not Ichigo.

Well, she got at least a little information out of whoever this was. When he said 'King' he was obviously referring to Ichigo, and she didn't doubt that Ichigo would come back, she was just worried this replacement might have done something to him, or do something to them while Ichigo was wherever he was. Rukia huffed in irritation, swiftly hopping back out the window and shunpoing to Urahara's, questions filling her mind by the bucketful as she tried to dislodge the worry this stranger in Ichigo's body had managed to stick her with.

Rukia came barreling through the doors to the Urahara Shoten at almost full speed, slowing down at the last second to avoid crashing into anything, the geta-boshi was frighteningly protective of his little shop.

"Kuchiki-san," he greeted with his usual cheerfulness, not at all surprised by her abrupt and noisy entrance. "What brings you here on this fine day?"

"What's wrong with Ichigo?" She skipped over all the polite greeting crap, preferring to move straight into the reason she was there, harboring no doubt what so ever that the blond ex-captain knew exactly what she was talking about.

He decided to play dumb anyway, "Whatever do you mean Kuchiki-san?" He opened that damn fan of his, covering his sly grin behind the white fabric.

"You know very well what I'm talking about. That _thing _inhabiting Ichigo's body, what did it do with him?" She paused for a moment but before Urahara even opened his mouth Rukia was taking again, "What is _it_?"

Urahara sighed. Looked like the cat was out of the bag now, she'd actually seen the being inhabiting Ichigo's body. "Truthfully, I'm not all that sure. But it hasn't caused any problems so far and I am certain it will uphold its promise to return Ichigo as soon as he can."

Rukia's eyes narrowed, "What do you mean as soon as it can?"

"I mean it doesn't seem like it wanted to end up in this position, although it's certainly enjoying it. Whatever happened to Ichigo, this new creature just seems to be filling in for him while he's not there."

"Okay, that's weird, but are you sure we can trust it, and what happened to Ichigo in the first place?"

"Again, I'm not entirely sure; the best thing we could try is asking it what's going on."

"I already tried that," Rukia scowled slightly, "It refused to tell me anything."

Urahara didn't bother to hide his expression behind his fan this time, his smile sending shivers down Rukia's back despite the fact that she knew it wasn't meant for her. "Then we'll just have to use more convincing methods."

The two wasted no time and within the hour one orange headed teen was strapped to a chair confronted by a geta-boshi and the bitch he'd officially met only a bit before. He glared balefully at the two in front of him, thinking over he had gotten himself in this situation in the first place. After the midget had left King had given him a stern talking to about not making enemies out of his friends (actually, it was Zangetsu but they were both probably thinking the same thing anyway), but was overall happy that his Hollow hadn't killed any of them yet. Their relationship had improved exponentially and only now had Ichigo entrusted Shiro with his body willing. There was no way Shiro was going to screw this up.

That brought them eventually to when Urahara had come in with some strange device that had rendered the Hollow unconscious before he was hauled back to the shop like dead weight. When he'd woken up Urahara's creepy scientist smile was in place, effectively sending chills down Shiro's spine. Whatever followed could _not_ be pleasant. Since Ichigo was in no condition to speak, Zangetsu voiced both of their thoughts in the back of Shiro's head, '_switch out with me, I'm better at dealing with people than you are._'

However reluctantly, Shiro had to agree with that, quickly pulling his consciousness from the body and appearing at his King's side in the inner world. Zangetsu's floated to the surface, allowing him to take over the body.

Rukia watched with confusion as the venomous golden eyes that had been burning holes in her skull suddenly drooped tiredly before opening again to reveal curious blue ones. Urahara was watching in obvious fascination as the changes took place, waiting with energy akin to a kid on Christmas for this new being to speak.

After a moment of silence where the new being in Ichigo's body simply took some time to look at its new surroundings, it spoke. His voice was deeper than Ichigo's (it was definitely male) and seemed to sound older than it was, more wisdom than behind it than his appearance let on. "I must apologize for Shirosaki's erratic behavior. If he offended either of you in any way I am certain he didn't mean it."

"Shirosaki is the name of the one that you just replaced?" The shopkeeper was trying his hardest not to jump up and down childishly in his excitement and while he just barely succeeded he couldn't quite wipe the creepy grin off his face that made even Shiro (who couldn't see it) shudder. The small nod of confirmation was all he needed before he was firing question after question as Rukia stood quietly in the background absorbing as much information as she could.

"What's your name? What are you and Shirosaki? How are in control of the body? Is Ichigo okay? What happened to him? When is coming back?"

The newly blue eyes blinked slowly as he attempted to organize all the inquiries being thrown his way, answering each slowly just in case he hadn't heard them all correctly. "You may call me Zangetsu. I am half of Ichigo's Zanpakuto, Shirosaki is the other half. Ichigo is too weak to do it himself so we have permission. He's fine. He has the flu. Whenever he gets better."

Rukia blinked when he finished, going over her thoughts carefully while Urahara scribbled as much as he could on a note pad ne seemingly conjured out of nowhere. "Ichigo has the flu."

"Yes." Then as an afterthought he added, "Could you untie me, this is uncomfortable."

Rukia deftly untied Zangetsu from the chair, her mind elsewhere as she thought, _We went through all this because Ichigo has the _flu.

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Pansy: Well, Silver's still working on her overactive imagination so I'll be wrapping up. Review, comment, point out inconsistencies, and maybe if you're lucky you'll get something other than one-shots sometime in the foreseeable future.


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